Want an easy way to keep up on the latest TUX website stories, news, and reviews? Load the RSS feed featured below into the reader of your choice, and get headlines and summaries downloaded automatically. Click here to learn more about RSS.

Simplify Downloads With Kget

Kget is another of the little gems that are hidden within KDE. Like Kalarm and even Kruler, you aren't sure why you need them until you try them.

Kget helps you download files from the Internet. I didn't know I needed help until I tried Kget. We become very used to just clicking on links, having a dialog box pop up and waiting for a file to download. It's simple but it also means an instance of your browser is tied up with the work.

Think about what help might make sense. Here are some things that come to mind:

Being able to start a bunch of downloads and not having to worry about them.

Having failing downloads automatically restart

Having files of different types (a program vs. a PDF document, for example) automatically get put in different destination directories.

Delay some downloads such that others can complete.

Well, Kget can do all this and more. And, even better, it can do all of this and more without you really having to think about it.

The easiest way to start Kget is to press Alt-F2 and enter kget in the run box. The first time you start it, a dialog box will ask you if you would like to integrate it into Konqueror. Don't dwell on this--just say yes. All this means is that Konqueror will, by default, use Kget for any downloads.

A down-pointing arrow icon will appear in the panel on your screen. Kget is now there when you need it. There is a lot more you can do but this is all you need to get started. Using your browser, find a link to something you would like to download. Just drag the link (or icon) to the Kget arrow in the panel. You will be prompted for the local filename for the save and then the download will be added to the Kget work queue. You can then go on with your browsing or other work.

If you have queued some downloads and want to know if they are done, click on the Kget arrow in the panel. A new window will show up that lists and transfers that are not complete.

If you want to verify that a transfer was completed, View->Show Log Window will give you what you need.

One of the really handy features of Kget is to have files of different types automatically saved in different directories. You can establish relationships between file extensions and directories by going to the Folders tab in the Setting->Configure Kget menu.

This should offer you the basic idea of what Kget can do for you. There is, of course, a lot more. Chapter three of the built-in help offers a command reference. That's a good place to see what else Kget can do.

Comment viewing options

My favorite Win gadget was Filehound back when I was on dialup. Filehound was a Win app I was really going to miss when I moved to Linux. Thankfully I found KGet! I would like to see some of the same features though - copy an address to the clipboard and it begins the download (feature can be turned off), download speed throttling, virus inspection (though not the threat it was in Windows - a BIG reason I took up with Linux), extract URL's from copied text, etc. Filehound is a great little app at only 500K. Add some of those features. Thanks for great software and a great OS!

Hi everybody, i am Zaki from Malaysia. I used linux just for fun more to internet getway or firewall (the best thing it free!!!). i really suprised with Kget capability. From now on, i'm taking linux seriously... ;)

I use wget because I am a big fan of command line. But I use wget whenever I need to download files from the net. It just makes downloading seem to go faster. Thanks for bringing Kget into the light for everyone to see.

Sure, Kget is great, but it's unusable. I'll check it out again once there is an option to automatically rename files with the same filename (like any other reasonable download manager -- they append a number to the end of the filename, instead of bringing up an annoying dialog box each time.)